


Kissing the Old Year Out, Kissing the New Year In

by itsactuallycorrine



Category: Will & Grace
Genre: Holidays, Kissing, M/M, Post-Episode: S09E07 Gay Olde Christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 16:05:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13217265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsactuallycorrine/pseuds/itsactuallycorrine
Summary: Will and Jack kiss on Christmas, and it probably doesn't mean anything, even though it keeps happening. Right?





	Kissing the Old Year Out, Kissing the New Year In

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I had fully recovered from my disappointment when Will & Jack didn't end up together back in 2006. Then the show came back and so did all my feelings about them. And here we are.

After Karen drops them off at their building on Christmas Eve, Will pauses in the doorway of his apartment instead of following Grace inside. He turns to Jack, who is humming carols absentmindedly while he opens his own door. “Special requests for breakfast tomorrow? Grace asked for waffles.” 

Jack puts on a dramatic grimace as he twists himself to look back. “Ooh, did I forget to tell you? I promised Skip I’d go to Bonnie’s so we can Skype him and Elliot to open gifts and celebrate together.”

“What? That’s great! I’m glad you’re staying in touch with them.” Will frowns a little. “I guess I won’t see you at all tomorrow, then. Or rather, later today. I’ve got to be in Connecticut by two.”

Turning fully, Jack nods. “I guess not.” He offers a hug with a playful pout. “Merry Christmas, Will.”

“Merry Christmas, Jack.” Will steps into the hug and drops a quick kiss to Jack’s lips without another thought.

Despite his emotionally-reserved childhood—or maybe because of it—Will loves displaying affection. With friends like Grace and Jack, both of whom have never met a boundary they wouldn’t trample, there’s no way he couldn’t. A hug, a squeeze of the shoulder, a quick kiss—they come to him as naturally as breathing now. This kiss is just like any other he’s given Jack: friendly, sexless.

Which doesn’t explain why, when he pulls back, he lingers in Jack’s arms, reluctant to pull away. He meets Jack's gaze, runs his own over Jack's face, and in a single breath, the air around them feels charged and something in Will’s gut pulls taut. Maybe it’s the holiday or the drinks in Karen’s limo or, hell, even the ghost of Billiam and John Patrick, but Will leans back in and kisses Jack again. Soft, exploring, intense. 

It’s not until Jack starts to kiss back that Will relaxes into it, loosening his jaw, wrapping one hand around the back of Jack’s neck. The other finds its way onto his chest, where the racing heartbeat matches Will’s own. 

His head spins and his eyes close and he’s about ninety percent sure he’s shaking. It’s not until one of them groans—and Will desperately hopes it wasn’t him, but he’s lost all sense of self, can’t tell where he ends and Jack begins—that they wind down to a stop.

Will keeps his eyes shut as Jack turns on his heels and disappears behind his door. After a few long minutes of gathering his composure, Will sighs and walks into his apartment.

“Everything okay?” Grace asks, and he knows he must look as shaken as he feels.

But he just waves her off. “I’m fine. Good night, Grace.” Walking towards his bedroom, he presses his thumb to his bottom lip and wonders what the hell came over him, and how he's supposed to sleep with the taste of Jack still on his tongue.

 

* * *

 

It’s no surprise that he doesn’t run into Jack all Christmas Day, but when he still doesn’t see him the following two days, Will gets nervous. On his way home from the office, he decides to take matters into his own hands, and knocks on Jack’s door.

“It’s open!” comes from inside, and Will walks in to see Jack in an apron smudged with yellow-orange streaks while he stirs something in a bowl. He looks cautious at first, but covers it with a smile. “Will!”

“Are you cooking?” Will peers into the bowl to see goop the same color as the smears on Jack’s apron. “Curry? Inexplicably chunky curry?”

Jack rolls his eyes. “No, duh, It’s a face mask, made with turmeric. I saw it in an Instagram post of a YouTube clip. You don’t think I look this beautiful and ageless naturally, do you? It takes a lot of effort and hard work, Will!”

“I want some,” Will says with a little whine, and Jack sighs.

“Fine, but I hope you know it can’t undo years of damage. Go change—actually, no, never mind,” Jack says, side-eyeing Will’s outfit. “That shirt deserves to be ruined.”

Will plucks at the hem of his kelly green polo and frowns. “What? Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“Uh, nothing, if you’re just coming into the club after playing the back nine,  _ George _ ,” Jack says with a scoffing laugh. 

With a wince, Will nods. “Okay, I get your point. Now that I don’t wear suits to work every day, I’m experimenting with business casual. Not all of us have a collection of argyle sweater ves-” He’s cut off as Jack starts smearing the mask on his face.

“Hold still, you don’t want this running into your mouth.”

Once they each have a thin layer of mask on and they’re staring at the ceiling as they sit on the couch, Will bites the bullet. “Do we need to talk about it?” he asks through a locked jaw, trying not to dislodge the mask or crack it.

“We’ve got five more minutes,” Jack grits out. “It won’t work if you’re just frowning new lines into your face as soon as it smooths out the old ones.”

Will sits quietly for another minute, but he can’t help himself. “I don’t want things to be weird between us. You’re my best friend, Jack.”

“It’s only weird if you make it weird, you big weirdo.” Jack turns his head to the side a bit and catches Will’s eye. “Why are you making such a big deal out of this? We’ve kissed before.”

“Not like that, though,” Will says, then under his breath, “At least not that we remember.”

“You’ve made out with Grace, and it didn’t affect anything.”

“And Karen. But this is different,” he insists, and—damn the mask—lifts his head to face Jack. “There wasn’t any potential there.”

Jack freezes for a minute, and Will would swear that something that looked a lot like hope flickered through his gaze. “But there’s potential here? Between us?”

“Isn’t there? Haven’t we already admitted as much in the past?” Will asks, but the timer on Jack’s phone goes off.

They wash the mask off, crowded into Jack’s bathroom, and Will watches as Jack follows it with some viscous clear serum, smoothing it all over his face.

Jack glances at Will from the corner of his eye and then shakes more serum onto his fingers. “C’mere,” he says, and Will does, closing his eyes as Jack massages the cool liquid into his skin. “We’ll let that dry down for a minute before the next step.”

Will blinks and meets Jack’s gaze. “We’re okay, right?”

“Of course.” Jack smiles and toys with Will’s collar. “It was just a kiss. It doesn’t have to mean anything… no matter how good it was.”

Will smirks. “It was good, wasn’t it?”

With a hum, Jack takes the next vial of product out of his medicine cabinet. “I’m not going to lie. You’ve got a law of raw potential. With the right coaching…” He bites the corner of his lip and raises his brows.

“Raw potential,” Will scoffs. “Maybe if I had a more active partner, who didn’t make me do all the work…”

“You caught me by surprise, Will!” Jack spits, aggressively moisturizing first his face and then Will’s. “Next time will be different!”

Will pauses. “Next time? So. There will be a, uh, next time?”

Waving his hand, Jack says, all nonchalance, “Sure, why not? It’s just making out.”

“Right, right. Just making out,” Will echoes, like he’s ever been casual about something like that. He catches Jack’s eye and sees a gleam of something there, and thinks, Why not? “So you… you wanna make out?”

And they do, wrapped up in each other on Jack’s couch, never going any further than that, and it’s the simplest and yet most complex thing Will’s ever done.

And he loves it.

 

* * *

 

Amazingly, it really, truly doesn’t seem to be a big deal. Over the next few days, without planning or forethought, they just fall together.

Of course, it’s never when Grace or Karen is around, and Will hasn’t said anything to either of them. He assumes Jack hasn’t either since nothing’s mentioned as everyone files into Will’s apartment for their New Year’s Eve party.

Which is why he scrambles to cover his outraged, “ _What?!?_ ” after Jack casually drops some information about the new guy he’s seeing.

“Are you going deaf as well as bald?” Jack asks, then cups his hands around his mouth to shout, “I date boys, grandma!”

“Yeah, and the scamp tried to keep this one from me,” Karen says with a scoff and a belt off her martini. “Like I wouldn’t notice the beard-burn all over his neck or the hickey on his collar-bone or the bruise on his inner thigh.”

Jack winces. “Kare, I told you, the bruise is from an unrelated incident. Anyway, yes, since Karen is so observant, I had to tell her  _ something _ ,” he says with a tilt of his head and a significant glance, and it clicks: Jack made up a guy to throw Karen off.

It should be a relief, but instead there’s a bad taste in Will’s mouth and anxiety in his stomach. He pushes both down and fakes a smile. “I don’t know what’s more disturbing, the fact that Karen saw your inner thigh or the thought of an almost-fifty-year-old man with a hickey.”

“Don’t be jealous, Will,” Jack says, batting his lashes while his eyes gleam retribution. “I’m sure someone would give you one, too, if they weren’t afraid of inhaling a mouthful of saggy skin.”

Karen presses the side of her fist to her lips and gags dramatically. “God, Jackie, do you want me to lose the entire contents of my stomach? I didn’t drink all day just to redecorate Will and Grace’s rug.” She stares at it beneath her shoes. “Although it would be an improvement.”

Grace rolls her eyes and carries over the cheese and charcuterie board Will put together earlier. “Jack, you should’ve brought him and spent New Year’s together. You know, begin the year as you mean to go on.”

“Like, me being stuck in this apartment with only the three of you for company?” Will asks, grinning when Grace makes a face at him.

“Drunk as a skunk, high as a kite, and built like a brick house?” Karen adds with a giggle.

Jack strikes a pose, bowing against the arm of the couch. “Young, beautiful, talented, and humble.”

They all turn to Grace, who says, “Mouth full of meats and cheeses,” through a mouth, well, exactly that.

“Besides, Grace, can you imagine Jack sticking with the same guy all year? Half the gay guys in Manhattan would go into full mourning,” Will says, deliberately not glancing that way. 

“Oh, I don’t know, Wilma. I think he’s serious about this one,” Karen teases, poking Jack in the side over and over. “My little poodle’s in loooooove.”

“Shut up, Karen!” Jack bites out, even as he squirms and giggles a little. “Stop! I’m not… You’re wrong. It’s not that serious.”

“Oh my God, Jack, are you  _ blushing _ ?” Grace leans forward to peer at his face. “I think you are. I didn’t even know your blood could surge into any body part above the belt. Our little boy’s growing up,” she says, voice choked with fake emotion, draping her arm around Jack’s shoulder. Then—God help them all—she starts to sing. “ _ Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? _ ”

“Real mature, you guys,” Jack says, standing up and pushing away from them, arms crossed and hip jutted out.

“Aw, Jackie, we only tease because we love.” Karen follows him, touching his arm briefly. 

“Yeah. I mean, you have to admit,” Grace says, “this isn’t exactly typical for you, getting all twisted up about one guy.”

“Well, isn’t it about time I did?” Jack asks, hands on his hips. “I certainly wasn’t expecting this to happen to me, now, after all this time. And with…” He shakes his head. “But it’s really probably not that serious. I don’t want to get your hopes up. Or mine.” He glances at Will then.

He sucks in a breath. He’s never seen Jack so vulnerable. Or, well, that’s not quite true. A lifetime ago, in the frozen foods aisle of D’Agostino’s, Jack took a similar chance, and the look on his face now—the mix of hope and resignation, bravery and fear—echoes that night. Is it possible? Could Jack really have felt this way about him all this time? 

He loses track of the conversation as his mind flickers through the decades, remembering moment after moment that he’d written off, but together, they show a clear pattern.

The click of the balcony door brings him back to the present, and he sees that Grace and Karen are bickering about Grace’s jumpsuit, and Jack’s coat is missing from the rack by the door.

Will pulls his own coat on and walks out onto the balcony, standing next to Jack at the railing. “You okay?”

“Fine. You know me,” Jack says with a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You?”

“I’m… confused,” Will admits after a long beat.

“That makes two of us.”

With a sigh, Will turns to him. “Look, can we have a candid, one hundred percent honest conversation about this? Because if you want something serious, if that’s what you’re after… I just want to know.”

“What I want?” Jack throws his hands up. “You are the one who kissed me, mister! I was minding my business, fine with being friends, and then there were your lips, all over mine.”

“Well, I didn’t realize at the time that you were in love with me!” It’s out of his mouth before he can even think about it, and he winces when Jack looks away. “Jack…” he sighs. “Really? After all these years?”

Jack makes a dismissive noise. “It’s not like I was pining away for you. I put myself out there thirty years ago, you didn’t feel the same way, so I kept it pushed down. Well, as much as I could.”

“Yeah, but you never even said anything,” Will says with a shake of his head.

“Would it have changed anything? We’re friends—best friends—and losing that wasn’t worth it.” He hesitates. “It’s not going to change anything now, is it?”

“I don’t know,” Will admits, grabbing Jack’s shoulders when he tries to turn away. “No, wait. Listen to me. You and I will always,  _ always _ be friends, no matter what else. But what I feel now… it’s not nothing. And it’s not just friendship, or the love you have for a family pet,” he says with a small smile, which Jack reluctantly matches. “There’s something else here, and I think it’s been here a while. I want to explore it. But only if that’s what you want, too.”

Jack presses his lips to Will’s as an answer, and Will knows it’s not midnight, but it still feels like the start of something great.

He pulls back and runs his hands up and down Jack’s arms. “Let’s go inside, get warm, and wait for the countdown.”

“Hey!” 

Behind them, someone taps the glass repeatedly and they turn to find both Grace and Karen standing there, Grace gaping while Karen smirks and holds out her hand. Grace pulls cash from inside her bodice and slaps it into Karen’s palm with a huff, and walks away. Karen winks and draws the curtains closed. 

“On second thought, maybe we should just stay out here,” Will says on a sigh, and Jack agrees and nuzzles into his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> happy new year!


End file.
